475 post-graduate medical seats approved

In its bid to increase the pool of competent and skilled medical specialists in the country, the government has approved 475 post-graduate (PG) medical seats.

While the process of granting permissions for increasing the number of undergraduate for the academic year 2015-2016 is still on, the government has already given its approval for increase of 475 PG seats. In fact, to increase the availability of PG seats in medical colleges, the government is providing funds to the government medical colleges for infrastructure development, faculty and equipment in the ratio of 75:25 under the new scheme of strengthening gradation of state government medical colleges for starting new PG disciplines and PG seats.

Significantly, 1152 PG seats were increased for the academic year 2014-2015, with Karnataka getting the maximum share of 218 seats followed by Uttar Pradesh (146 seats) and Andhra Pradesh (144 seats).

To overcome the scarcity of doctors in the country, the government is planning to double the availability of undergraduate and post-graduate seats to meet a target of 80,000 MBBS and 45,000 PG seats in India by 2021. The ministry of health is targeting additional 38,431 seats in the MBBS and 22,806 seats in the PG streams by 2021, representing a whopping rise of 92.45 per cent and 102.75 per cent respectively over the current availability.

The plan for the overwhelming increase was mooted during the UPA regime in 2012 to ensure a doctor-patient ratio of 1:1,000 against the current fraction of 1:2,000. Most of these seats and medical colleges are concentrated in the southern and western states like Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Goa.